


lights, camera, action

by capriciouslouis



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Legends of Tomorrow spoilers, Mostly just John and Zari hanging out and figuring out they're more similar than you might think, Spoilers for Legends of Tomorrow S05E15 Swan Thong, i guess, i wrote this in one sitting and then accidentally grew it by 1000 words when i tried to edit it, now that's what i call magic folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capriciouslouis/pseuds/capriciouslouis
Summary: Zari's used to her friends and family dismissing her influencer career. The last person she'd expect to take an interest is John Constantine.The one where John and Zari bond over magic and John is nowhere near as much of a bastard as he pretends to be.
Relationships: John Constantine/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Comments: 19
Kudos: 145





	lights, camera, action

“So explain it to me again, this CatChat thing,” says John. “You know I’ve never really understood this influencer malarkey.”

He’s lounging on Zari’s bed while she sets up her equipment and finishes tidying the background. Her room on the Waverider is cosily lit, with a few sponsored products strategically placed on the outskirts of the shot. Mick lent her some candles, though she had to root deep through his stash to find ones that weren’t already burned to stubs or obviously stolen from church altars, and they add a pleasant ambience to the room. Zari steps back and gives the room another quick once-over to make sure there’s no future tech in the shot – last time she did a livestream, she accidentally left a purse from Yves St Laurent’s 2092 Fall Collection lying on the bed, and her fans went feral trying to figure out where she’d got it.

Before joining the Legends, she’d go live at least once a week, but her streams have fallen by the wayside lately and her manager has sent a few emails prodding her to put in more effort. The last thing Zari wants to do is neglect her business after so many years building it up, so she’d planned to take advantage of this rare quiet moment to have a little catch-up with her viewers – and then John came in and flopped onto her bed to watch. Her first instinct was to shoo him out, but it’s the first time in years that anyone outside of the influencer community has actually shown an interest in what she does, even if he’s only here because he has nothing better to do. Behrad’s been putting in more of an effort lately, but he still rolls his eyes whenever she talks about her followers and her parents have never taken an interest. Whenever she mentions her brand deals or new subscriber milestones, they act as if she hasn’t spoken and steer the subject away from their vapid daughter and her silly social media career – regardless of the fact that she’s the one who put a roof over their heads.

“It all comes down to advertising,” she explains as she adjusts her phone on its tripod, checking the settings. “TV commercials are in the past; these days influencers are where it’s at, even where you’re from. People prefer the authenticity of having someone like me endorse a product, rather than a model or an actor. It’s like having a friend recommend something to you versus seeing it on a billboard.”

John leans back against her carefully arranged rose gold throw pillows and fiddles with his lighter, a cigarette already clamped between his lips.

“Hey,” says Zari. “We talked about this.”

She takes the cigarette out of his mouth and drops it in the tiny trash can she keeps by the bed, the lid clanking as she takes her foot off the pedal. The memory of John coughing blood down his front as his abused lungs finally gave out isn’t one any of them will forget in a hurry – he could’ve been the poster child for those gross pictures of death and disease that they print on the outside of cigarette packets. Shortly after his miraculous recovery, Sara staged an intervention and confiscated every pack of cigarettes on the ship, but somehow he keeps finding more, as if he’s pulling them out of thin air – which knowing John, he might be.

“Alright, hand them over,” she says, reaching for the packet.

John grins cheekily and holds up his hands, which are now empty. “Dunno what you’re on about, love.”

Zari rolls her eyes but lets it go as she goes back to fixing the camera settings. There’s a specific filter she likes to use that softens the shot, making her look young and sweet, the perfect girl next door.

“So, it’s all advertising, yeah?” he says.

“Pretty much. Brands send me products and I talk about them. I get paid for the placement and I also get ad revenue in exchange for companies playing their ads during my videos, kind of like a commercial break.”

“And that’s what you’re doing now, is it?”

“No, this is just a livestream. I go live with my followers and it helps me stay connected. It’s more personal, because they get the chance to talk to me and see me respond in real time. They’ll send me cash donations, or they can pay to get their messages highlighted on the screen so that it’s more likely I’ll see them.”

“Really?” he says, intrigued. “People do that? Pay money just to talk to you?”

“Sure. My time is extremely valuable.”

“And here I am getting it for free,” he says, resting his chin on his hand. “I should count myself lucky.”

“Damn right you should,” says Zari as she fixes her hair in the mirror. He’s still watching her and her cheeks warm; she pretends not to see the way he’s looking at her, the smile on his face softer than usual, without the usual bravado.

“Is that how it works in the future? Instead of having a boring office job, everyone just talks to a camera and gets paid?”

“Not everyone. People always think what I do is so easy, but it’s really not. These days I have a team to help with the heavy lifting; video editing, photoshopping my pictures and all of that, but for a long time it was just me and a camera. Hundreds of thousands of people have tried to make a career out of this, but not everybody makes it.”

“How did you do it? Was it all because of the dragon thing?”

“That’s what started it, but if going viral was all it took then there’d be thousands of people making a living off of one moment. Part of it was strategic; I rode the wave and made my moment last instead of just fading into obscurity like a meme or a passing internet craze, but most of it was down to a lot of hard work.”

It’s true that without Wickstable, she wouldn’t be where she is today. She owes her fortune and her success and her privileged existence to a magical creature, at least in part. Behrad loved to rub that in her face when they were growing up, insisting that but for a twist of fate, it would’ve been him with the brand deals and the millions of followers. Zari doesn’t believe that, though. Yes, it was Wickstable who got her out there, Wickstable who made her a household name – but it was her who took the torch and ran with it, her who took the spark of popularity that being Dragon Girl gave her and grew it into a flame. As much as she loves her brother, he’s too chill, too fond of lazing around to build an empire the way she did. She’s self-made in every way that counts, and she won’t let anyone brush that under the rug.

“It’s a balancing act – that’s what most people don’t get. You to make your life seem super great so that people want to watch you. It makes them want to buy the products you use because it ties into this illusion that they could have what you have, that they could have the fancy house and the designer clothes and the amazing lifestyle. But at the same time you have to stay relatable, down to earth, like the girl next door, because otherwise they lose that personal connection. You have to be a little vulnerable, so that they can connect to you – but you also have to keep up the illusion that your life is amazing. It’s like this constant tug-of-war between being real enough to make them like you, but fake enough to make them want to be you.”

Her mouth twists. She’s well aware of what she sounds like – spoiled princess complaining about a life that thousands of kids dream of. John Constantine comes from a time where the influencer thing is just starting to kick off, where in a survey of thousands of schools, over seventy-five percent of the kids want to do Youtube for a living. No doubt if she said any of this to one of those kids, they’d think she’d lost her mind.

“Sounds like a bloody nightmare,” John says.

It’s then that Zari realises that he’s not just lying around bored like she expected – he’s paying attention. He’s watching her intently, and he _sees_ her – the parts of her she usually hides behind a dazzling smile and a flutter of false eyelashes. Her parents already think she’s shallow and empty; at this point, the veneer is as much for them as it is for her followers. It’s easier to swallow their disregard for shiny, perfect Zari than it is to let them see the real her and risk that they might reject that, too.

John has seen her at what most people think of as her worst: her flippant, selfie-taking, diva-ish self, and while Zari doesn’t see anything wrong with those things, she’s well aware that they make most people turn away. Not John Constantine, though. He’s still looking.

“It can be,” she admits. “I think the hardest part is that I don’t just have to make them believe it, I have to make _me_ believe it. I have to be genuine. If I don’t believe in how awesome my life is then I lose the power to make them buy into it.”

His eyes light up at that. “It’s a bit like magic,” he says.”

Her brow furrows. “Come again?”

John sits up. “Everyone can do magic, right? In theory. It’s not about being born with some innate ability; it’s about conviction. You have to believe.” He holds his palm out flat and passes his other hand over it, and suddenly there’s a box of cigarettes in his hand, one missing from the pack. John flips it over and offers it to her.

“Neat trick,” she says, examining the packet. Then she runs her hand up his forearm and feels his rolled-up sleeve. He’s lithe rather than overtly muscular, not like the guys she’s dated in the past who practically burst out of their shirts every time they flexed.

John smirks. “Oh, I see. Not to worry, love; magic tends to have that effect on the ladies. You wouldn’t be the first woman I’ve given a taste of the dark arts in order to lure her into bed.”

“Don’t flatter yourself; I’m just trying to figure out where you put it.” Though she has no idea how he could’ve hidden it up those tight sleeves without her noticing.

“Watch,” says John, and he does it again.

This time she keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the pack and doesn’t even blink, but suddenly it’s gone. Zari makes a grab for his hand, flipping it over and then checking underneath the sheets to make sure he hasn’t stashed it out of sight, but it’s nowhere to be found.

“Okay, I give up. What’s the secret?”

“There’s no secret. The packet’s still here, love, it didn’t go anywhere – you just can’t see it. It’s a bit like your influencer thing. Your life’s not perfect, but when you’re on camera talking to your viewers, they see what you want them to see. Or have I got that wrong?”

“No, that’s right,” she says. 

John takes her hand and folds his fingers over it – and then she feels the cardboard against her palm. When she looks down, the carton is resting in her hand.

Zari can’t help it; she smiles like a little kid, delighted by the trick. “You think I could do that?”

“Sure you could. Here.”

He reaches onto the nightstand and picks up a tube of her Z-nation officially licensed lipstick, a deep shade of crimson called Dragon’s Blood, because no matter how hard she tries she can’t persuade her management team to let go of the whole dragon thing. By now it’s been milked to death.

John holds up the lipstick. “This’ll do. Don’t want anything too big for your first go.”

She takes it. “So are there like, magic words, or…?”

“I could probably think of some if it’ll help you get into the spirit of the thing,” he says, “but you don’t really need them. All you really have to do is believe. It’s about conviction.” He leans back and plucks a cigarette out of the pack, which he turns over in his fingers, just to have something to do with his hands. “Try it.”

Zari looks down at the lipstick. Then she closes her eyes and wiggles her fingers over it. When Behrad was five, their parents hired a magician to perform at his party. The memory is dim, but she still remembers watching, enchanted, as he’d waved his hands around with wide eye, so she channels that and imagines her free hand emptying, and her fingers start to tingle. She takes a quick peek.

Nothing. The lipstick still sits on her palm, its holographic Z logo catching the light, the points of the dragon wings shimmering. Stubbornly, Zari closes her eyes again and focuses harder. In her mind, she drapes a red cloth over the tube and then whips it away – voila! Gone.

The lipstick stays put, as vibrant red as ever.

Her smile fades. As if she seriously thought that she could do magic. Zari’s a woman of many talents; she can put on a full face of make-up in no time at all, she’s an amazing photographer, her outfit coordination is on point, she’s a social butterfly and she can organise her way out of anything armed with nothing but an Erin Condren life planner and a smile – but that’s not magic. She knows you don’t have to be a master of the dark arts like John or a shapeshifter like Charlie to pull off an incantation here and there; she’s seen all the Legends use symbols to do their bidding under John’s tutelage. Ava, Mick… hell, even Gary can do a few simple spells, even if they do go wrong most of the time. Yet here she is falling at the first hurdle. Sure, she’s wielded the air totem a couple of times, but the totem is so intuitive that even an idiot could use it.

“Guess it didn’t work,” Zari says, keeping her tone light. “Better leave it to the professionals.”

“Hey,” John says softly. “Look at me.”

Reluctantly, she turns back to him. There’s no judgement in his expression. Unlike most people, who get frustrated with Zari’s tendency to abandon ship the second she’s not good at something, John doesn’t seem upset that she’s given up. For someone who takes pride in being a self-proclaimed bastard, he’s got remarkably kind eyes.

“Give it another go. For me. I know you’ve got it in you, love, and I think you know it as well.” He rests his hand on top of hers. “Believe it.”

Zari bites her lip. Then she returns her attention to the lipstick. She tries to summon the sense of calm she felt when she entered the totem and spoke to her other self – the floaty feeling as she let the real world fall away from her. Then she thinks of John’s magic, how he never doubts himself. He reaches for that power and it always answers his call, because he knows it’ll be there when he needs it most. A second of doubt would be all it’d take to break the spell, but it never does.

“Zari,” John says quietly.

“Shh. I’m concentrating.”

“Look.”

She opens one eye. Her heart leaps. The lipstick has vanished.

“Oh my God. Where’d it go?”

“You tell me,” John says.

“Shut up!” Zari says, and hits him on the arm. “You’re kidding.”

“Knew you had it in you. We’ll make a magician of you yet.”

Her smile is so wide that her cheeks ache. It’s the same feeling she got when she stood there at Heyworld with applause ringing out around her; the giddy excitement she gets whenever her team unveils a new product and she sees all her hard work finally come to fruition. The best part is that John looks just as pleased as she is. It’s the simplest trick in the book where he’s from, one he does without thinking, but he’s still grinning all over his face, his eyes crinkled at the corners. Swept up in the excitement of it all, Zari leans in and kisses him.

This kiss is gentler than any of the others they’ve shared. Their onstage kiss as Romeo and Juliet was a little like this, slow and unhurried, but that was all part of an act and she’d convinced herself that the butterflies in her stomach came from the character she played. Back then, he’d tasted like Marlboro lights and cheap whiskey, but today his breath is clean and his lips are soft, his stubble brushing against her cheek. There’s none of the frantic urgency they had when they made out in the Time Bureau safe house, or in the catacombs underneath the Fates’ Museum, when his hand had drifted up her back and settled there, fingers tangling in her hair. For the first time he’s kissing her like she’s special, and as much as she enjoyed the roughness of their dark fumbles, she thinks she likes this John more. Stripped of his bravado, he has nothing to prove.

Zari pulls away first. She’d keep kissing him like this for hours, but her fans will be waiting. John chases her mouth and tries to pull her back in, but she turns away, hiding a smile.

“Not that this isn’t fun, but I’m going live any second now and leaking your sex tape for views is so 2007. Go find someone else to goof around with. Some of us have work to do.”

She sits up and checks herself out in the phone screen, fixing her hair one last time, but when she glances over her shoulder, John hasn’t moved.

“Did you hear me?”

“Maybe I could be in your video thingamajig. I could be your glamorous assistant. You know, the strong silent type.” He flexes his arm jokingly.

Zari blinks. With his ever-present red tie at half mast, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his hair mussed, he looks like the complete opposite of an influencer. She can’t imagine him with a secret hankering to be in front of the camera – he wears the same outfit every day like a cartoon character, so fashion clearly isn’t at the forefront of his mind even at the best of times. Why would John Constantine of all people want to be part of her livestream? No one outside of her influencer social circle ever wants to be in her videos. Whenever she gets her phone out at home, Behrad walks around with his middle finger up so that she can’t show him without losing her ad revenue, and her parents cover their faces and duck out of the frame.

John misinterprets her silence. “No, you’re right, love. You don’t want me in it; I’d probably bugger the whole thing up anyway. My face is better suited to the radio than a video feed. You wouldn’t want your fans to see you hanging about with a miserable git like me. I’ll get out of your hair.”

The bedsprings creak as he gets up, but Zari grabs his hand.

“Wait,” she says. “You’d do that? Be in my stream? I didn’t think you were into the whole influencer thing.”

“Well, you know me, I’ll do anything once. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, and all that. Might as well find out what all the fuss is about.”

It warms her inside to think that he’s actually making an effort. They’re dipping tentative toes into each other’s worlds, and while Zari doubts John Constantine would make much of an influencer, she appreciates that he’s willing to give it a shot.

“Cool,” she says, smoothing her skirt down over her thighs, and then inwardly berates herself because the quickest way to sound like a loser is by saying something like ‘cool’ unironically. Zari clears her throat. “Well, no time like the present. I’m already a little late, so let’s get this show on the road.”

“Should I smarten up a bit? Fix my hair or whatever?” He runs a hand through it, leaving it messier than before.

“No, you look good.” Zari spends hours fussing over her own appearance, but she can’t imagine wanting John to look any way other than how he looks now, a little rough around the edges, smile crooked and shirt crumpled. He’s completely at odds with her own clean-cut girl-next-door persona, but like she said earlier, perfection is overrated. A little rugged English charm might be just what her audience needs.

She reaches for her phone and clicks the button to start the stream. Her own face smiles at her from the screen, with John’s beside her. Most people in this situation look at their own reflections, checking how they look on camera – but his eyes are still on her.

Zari gives one last private smile meant just for him – and then the numbers start scrolling over the screen and the messages come flying in almost too quickly to read as her fans ply her with comments, questions and greetings.

“Hey, Z-Nation! Thanks for tuning in today. It’s been too long since I’ve seen all of your gorgeous faces. As you may have noticed, I’ve been taking a break from social media these past few weeks, but I’m so happy to be here talking with you all!” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “Now as you might’ve noticed, we’ve got a special guest joining us in today’s stream. This is John, he’s my…” Her lips twitch. “Glamorous assistant. Say hi, John.”

John leans forward to read the comments, his forehead scrunched up. “All right, you lovely lot. How are we all today? I should probably warn you I’m not very well-versed with this social media stuff, so you’ll have to forgive me if I balls it up. So, love, what’s on the agenda for today then?”

“Funny you should ask,” says Zari, eyes lighting up wickedly. “Because I have an awesome idea. I think it’s time for a Z-nation sanctioned make-over. And luckily for you…”

Out of sight of the camera, she reaches into thin air and plucks the tube of Dragon’s Blood out of the ether.

“…I have the perfect shade of lipstick to go with that tie.”


End file.
